Introduction to Manuscript Studies

Description

"This book provides an orientation to the field of medieval manuscript studies. It will be of help to students in history, art history, literature, and religious studies who are encountering medieval manuscripts for the first time, while also appealing to advanced scholars and general readers interested in the history of the book before the age of print. Every chapter in this guidebook features numerous color plates that exemplify each aspect described in the text and are drawn primarily from the collections of the Newberry Library in Chicago and the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge."--Book jacket.

Willinsky 2019 p. 40: marginal note at end of manuscript of St. Gregory the Great's Moralia in Job by 10th century by copyist Florentius of Valeránica, qutoed in Introduction to Manuscript Studies p. 23 (DjVu p. 36), from Madrid Biblioteca Nacional MS 80:

Because one who does not know how to write thinks it no labor, I will describe it for you, if you want to know how great the burden of writing: it mists the eyes, it curves the back, it breaks the belly and the ribs, it fills the kidneys with pain, and the body with all kinds of suffering. … As the last port is sweet to the sailor, so the last line to the scribe.